Michelle Le Clerc and Heidi Soulsby said that they were surprised that the overspends were announced as news to the Policy & Resources Committee last week.
The States agreed to spend £12m. on the third and final phase of the integration of income tax and social security contributions in the spring of 2020. But that entire project, which should have cost £18m. at completion and paid for itself in efficiency savings by 2028, has now incurred costs of £24m., and it is said the technology changes have made it worse for frontline staff.
Michelle Le Clerc, a former president of the Employment & Social Security Committee, was on that project board, alongside Deputy Gavin St Pier, until she left the States in 2020. She said she had raised concerns about rising costs and a lack of progress on the project up until she left politics.
‘I feel really quite emotional about this,’ she said on The Long and The Short of It podcast, which the two former deputies produce and present on the Guernsey Press Politics podcast feed.
Listen to the full podcast
‘When I was on the board we did have some problems. Our legacy IT systems were in a shocking state.
‘I don’t think Agilisys appreciated how much work there was in bringing on that data and cleaning it up to transfer to a new platform.
‘I expressed concerns at that time. I felt that costs were escalating and there were delays because of the appointment of Agilisys, and that the system was far more complex than first thought.
‘I had many meetings with externally appointed project manager [who had IT experience] but I would report back to my committee that I had really serious concerns about the project not hitting targets and that costs were escalating even at that time.
‘From what’s come out I would say those concerns weren’t acted upon. But they were there at that time.
‘Deputy St Pier was aware of my concerns.
‘I don’t know what’s happened in the past four years and the oversight on that project but they did have somebody externally in and there should have been that oversight.’
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